


Count No Man Happy Until the End Is Known

by apollos



Series: all the times in-between [7]
Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: First Meetings, Fluff, High School, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Prequel, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 19:54:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20841113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: Dennis just wants to buy some weed, but he ends up making two life-long friends instead.





	Count No Man Happy Until the End Is Known

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so let me explain the chronology real quick. up until now, you can pretty much read every part of this series as independent from one another, even though they take place all in the same 'verse. this piece is going to serve as not only the "background" for their relationship in this series, but also as a direct primer for the next part (hence the prequel tag.) i was originally going to post this and the next part as one, but the next part is like, awful codependent sex stuff post the high school reunion, and this is fluffy and totally tonally different, so...yeah. this still works if you read the series as a whole, but i want this to have its own little moment too you know?

**Fifty**

_Weed doesn't really cover up the scent of body odor and poverty_, Dennis thinks as he leans against Ronnie's locker. _It just makes it worse. _Ronnie has scratched the word _cunt _above the little vents, and it looks like it's been painted over and scratched back in maybe six or seven times. Dennis traces the lines. He has to admire the sheer perseverance of this kid, the commitment he has to the lifestyle; anybody else probably would have given up after the third time, or chosen a different word, or a different location, but Ronnie seems determined to leave this specific mark in this specific locker. Still, it fucking _reeks_, like he's been storing his dirty gym shoes here instead of in the boys' locker room. Maybe he has, for that matter. Dennis piggybacked off his sister's exemption from gym, has never been in the locker room himself, only inside the building to watch the girls' volleyball games.

Six minutes after the final bell rings Ronnie finally appears, accompanied by that scrawny half-human crazy-eyed runt of a friend of his. A pair of rats, the both of them. Ronnie sees Dennis first and rearranges his face into a scowl, his eyebrows knitting together and his lips turning down. "What d'ya want?" he drawls as he comes closer, crossing his arms over his chest.

Dennis snorts. "_Please_."

"You fuckin' better say please!" Ronnie's friend adds, poking his head from behind Ronnie's body. The only person in the school that may actually be capable of hiding behind Ronnie, as skinny as they both are.

"Look, I just want to buy some weed, alright?" Dennis moves out of the way so Ronnie can get to his locker. "That's it. You know, since Teddy's out of the business, now."

"His shit wasn't as a good as mine. I get it from my dad's prison connects." Ronnie smiles and kicks at his locker, then rolls the lock around lazily. The door swings open. Dennis sees no gym shoes, but the smell magnifies.

"Yeah, I'm sure _prison weed _is top-fucking-notch."

"Are you gonna buy or are you gonna rag on my product?" Ronnie produces a crumpled Ziploc of bud, pulling it out of a pencil case wrapped in a sweatshirt. Conspicuous. Dennis snorts.

"I'm gonna buy."

"Fifty bucks."

"_Fifty_?" Dennis barks. "For _that _much of your skunk prison junk?"

"First time customer." Ronnie smiles in a way that's probably supposed to be threatening, but the way his lips quirk just looks smarmy, charming in a weird way. Dennis pops that thought as soon as it bubbles up, amends it to _smarmy smirking piece 'a shit._

"Whatever, man." Dennis forks over a crisp fifty, more to show Ronnie that he can afford to pay the inflated price than to honor him, or whatever. Dennis's father had returned from a business trip last night and instead of saying anything to his kids, asking how they were in the month he was gone, he'd thrown them each four hundred dollars and stomped upstairs to yell at and then bang Dennis's mother. Dennis had already spent a hundred of those dollars on a new pair of jeans, and now he stuffed the baggie of weed into their front pocket.

"Nice doin' business with ya!" Ronnie's friend calls as Dennis saunters off.

**Forty**

"Forty," Ronnie says. This time they meet in the dirt lot outside the school that might become something one day if the construction workers did anything besides nap in the sun and cat call. It's just them and the roaring sound of a sudden autumn wind. "I'm gonna knock you down to twenty-five, eventually. Ya know, like a rewards program."

"It ruins the business model if you tell me." Dennis counts the money out, two twenties and a five. When he passes the money to Ronnie, his fingernails look dirty but his hands are soft, softer than they have any right to be. _He's not tough_, Dennis thinks. _He hasn't been in any fights. None that he's won, anyway. What a fucking poser._

Dennis should take his weed and leave, but he stands and watches Ronnie as he counts the money back to himself, his tongue between his lips. "You're just charging me this because you know I can pay it," Dennis declares. "There's no fucking way you're selling to Schmitty or Psycho Pete for those prices."

"I _told _you. It's a loyalty thing."

"Whatever." Dennis changes the weed in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"I'm selling to somebody else," Ronnie says, watching as Dennis slides the cigarette between his fingers and cups his hand to protect from the wind. The lapels of their jackets flap, Ronnie's knotted hair rolling off his forehead like a tumbleweed. "So, like. Leave."

"Yeah, whatever, man." Dennis takes a long drag on the cigarette and then flicks some ash Ronnie's way. The stupid wind carries it in another direction from Dennis's target, into nothing.

**Thirty-Five**

This time it's behind the cafeteria during lunch and Dirt Grub's back, his hands shoved deep into the pocket of the gray hoodie he wears every day. Ronnie's not here yet, so Dennis stands beside the kid and leans against the wall, smoking.

"Can I have one?" Dirt Grub asks, nodding at the cigarette.

"No."

"Aw, how come?"

"I paid for these." Well, his father paid for them, really. Bought them for Dennis, actually, because Dennis is sixteen and illegal in too many ways to count. "They're mine."

"Didn't they teach you how to share?" Dirt Grub's eyes narrow and he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. Must have been huffing glue, Dennis thinks, judging by the bluish crust around his nostrils, on his upper lip. "In kindergarten? Did you go to kindergarten?"

Dennis laughs. "Sharing is for lesser people than me. Gods don't share. And when they do, it's something to be _celebrated_. It's a cause for a feast."

Dirt Grub's shoulder raise up as he looks away. "_Jesus_, you're weird," he mutters. "I don't fuckin' get it, I really fuckin' don't get it."

Ronnie lacks any sense of timing or showmanship, so a few empty minutes roll over before he appears. When he turns the corner, he's wearing a smile and holey t-shirt over holey jeans and Dennis sucks on that cigarette to prevent him from gagging on his and Dirt Grub's combined smell, like a discarded paper bag of glue curdling on a public bathroom's floor. "Hey-o," he greets them. "Sorry for bein' late. Lizzie wanted to talk."

"Lizzie?" Dennis lowers his cigarette, ash floating down. "The fuck did Lizzie O'Leary want with _you_?"

Ronnie's grinning before he's talking, his pride as strong as his smell. "To suck my dick."

Dirt Grub unfurls and laughs, and Dennis is laughing, too. Dennis does not join in when Dirt Grub wraps his arm around Ronnie and brings him down to his level, tussling his hair. "Yeah, _right_. She wanted to buy pot. She told me in third period."

"_And _to suck my dick!" Ronnie says, smiling. He pulls Dirt Grub in and now they're tussling for rel, pulling at each other's shirts.

Dennis leans back against the wall and smokes and watches for a few minutes, amused enough. Dirt Grub fights dirty and low, and if it was serious, Dennis would place his money on him. Ronnie flails, tries to kick at him. Finally, Dennis drops his cigarette into the asphalt and rubs it half-assedly with the toe of his Vans, then clears his throat. "Children."

"Hey!" Ronnie slithers out from Dirt Grub's grip. "I'm no kid."

"In the eye of the law?" Dennis says.

"He's got a point." Dirt Grub nods.

"Whatever." Ronnie narrows his eyes. "You want your weed or what, bro?"

"Yeah." Dennis dips into his pocket and pulls out three ten-dollar bills.

"You're short."

"It's not thirty?"

"Thirty-five." Ronnie crosses his arms and Dennis rolls his eyes. The kid's so easy to read, heart on the sleeves he doesn't wear.

So Dennis makes a grand show of digging around in his backpack for his wallet, then ruffling through the bills until he finds a five. He holds it above Ronnie's head, but Ronnie's only an inch or two shorter than him, so he snatches it with a sneer. "Nice doing business with you, Ronnie."

"Mac," Ronnie blurts.

"What?" Dennis is already walking off, sliding his backpack over his shoulder.

"Call me Mac," Ronnie says. His voice wavers, and Dennis sees his beating heart as clear as day. Possible paths unfold out in front of Dennis and he imagines himself walking down each one, where they might converge, the outcome of each. He smiles.

"'Kay. Bye, Mac."

**Thirty**

Dennis smokes through that batch of weed more quickly than the others. Winter closes in around him like the jaws of some predatory cat, biting its sharp, cold teeth into his skin. His parents are fighting. Dee has found some sucker to take her out on a few dates and now she spends all her time out of the house. He hasn't been laid in weeks. He's tried, but his temper quickens, scares the girls away. He needs to find a fresh hunting ground but keeps putting it off. It's too cold. Then it's Christmas break and he's mismanaged his weed and let some of the cool kids smoke it with him and he's _out_.

"Who is this?" Dennis can tell Mac's trying to make his voice tough, but something about the connection makes it sound higher than usual.

Dennis wraps his fingers in the phone's coil. He's lying on his bed in his bedroom, using the phone on his bedside table, listening to the sputtering of a radiator. "Dennis."

"Oh, cool." Mac's voice relaxes. "Hey. You want some?"

Dennis keeps twirling the cord. He thinks about the inherent intimacy of a phone call, of permitting somebody's presence into your space. "Yeah. Now."

"A'ight. Can you meet me at the park by the school?"

"God, Mac. You're such a cliché."

"Then buy your pot elsewhere."

"I'll be there."

Dennis pulls on a winter jacket over the sweater he's already wearing, ties a scarf around his neck. He looks in the mirror before he goes, pulls his hair one way and then the other. _Stupid_, he thinks. _Just get it and come right back._

At the playground, Dennis finds Mac sitting on a swing. He has both his arms wrapped around the metal chains, drawing patterns in the mulch with his feet. He jolts when Dennis sneaks up on him, pushes his shoulder. He doesn't get his feet up in time to move with the swing, so he stumbles into the mulch instead.

"Asshole!" Mac shrieks, jumping up and turning around. Dennis laughs and takes ahold of the swing, sends it flying towards Mac. It wobbles, but reaches his face; Mac pushes it back. A pair of mothers watching some warmly dressed children go down the same slide over and over again sneer at them.

"There's kids here," Dennis points out, gesturing towards the party.

"Yeah. Didn't think there'd be any, 'cause it's cold." Mac shrugs. "Let's go somewhere else."

Before Mac can even end the sentence, Dennis is saying "Come to my house."

Dennis leads Mac to where he's parked his car. His father had bought himself a new one this past year, leaving Dennis with the hand-me-down Buick Grand National as his birthday present. This suited Dennis just fine, and he smirks to himself when Mac seems impressed, his hand lingering on the handle. Dennis's smirk melts when Mac starts _laughing_, a full gut-busting laugh,when Dennis starts the car and the CD he has in starts playing alongside the roar of the engine.

"You got a problem with Steve Winwood?" Dennis glances at Mac and considers turning the song off, but decides against it. Mac can deal.

"Uh, yeah." Mac snorts and rubs at his face, sitting up in the seat. "This shit is _totally _lame, dude."

"Oh, yeah?" Dennis's heart bounces, but not in the way it does when he's angry and ready to send fists flying. "What music do you listen to, Ronnie 'The Rat' McDonald, oh ye grand arbitrator of taste?"

"Good shit. Metallica, the Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nirvana…"

"_Ugh_, God, of course. All that uncivilized, loud crap."

Mac doesn't respond to that, just picks up the CD album poking out of one of the cupholders. He flicks through the pages, commenting on everything. "_Rick Astley_? Who the fuck even is that? _Phil Collins? _At least he has that sick-ass drum solo."

Mac touches everything in Dennis's car like he owns it, grimy fingers running over the interior detail, pressing the buttons on Dennis's radio, popping the Steve Winwood CD out so he can finagle with the dial until he finds some staticky classic rock station. He leans back in the seat and crosses his ankle over his knee, drumming out the beat with his fingers. Dennis should pull over and kick him out. Instead, Dennis watches him through the corner of his eye. Learns him.

They arrive at Dennis's house still bickering about their music tastes, but Mac's mouth opens and hangs wordlessly when he sees the Reynolds's house. Dennis parks in his usual spot and kills the engine. For all Mac has touched his shit, he also put everything back neatly in its place.

"You're rich," Mac says.

"You didn't know?"

"I mean, I _knew_." Mac plays with a string hanging from the hem of his shirt as Dennis unlocks his front door. "I just didn't _know_."

"That makes no sense."

"I'm just saying, like, you know, this house, it's really nice—"

"Heard it all before." Dennis waves his hand. "My room's upstairs."

Inside Dennis's room, Mac seems to have shaken that stupid nice-poor-boy-next-door shtick and is back to shamelessly perusing Dennis's possessions. Dennis lets him, sits on his bed to take off his scarf and shoes and watches Mac as he works his way through Dennis's room. A trophy—little league baseball—on Dennis's dresser interests him, and then a framed formal picture of the Reynolds family from a few years back, and then Dennis's Bowie poster.

"Hey," Dennis says at last. "Come sell me weed."

"Oh, yeah. Right." Mac reaches into the pocket of his windbreaker and gets the baggie out. "Primo stuff this time, Den."

_Den. Mac. _These brusque, single-syllable names. They mean something, but Dennis isn't interested in pursuing that route right now. "Take off your shoes," he directs.

Mac raises his eyebrows at him.

"We're gonna smoke it together, you dumbass, and I don't want your dirty, stinking boots on my blanket." Dennis sighs. He reaches into his nightstand drawer and pulls out thirty dollars, dangling it in front of his face.

"You don't gotta pay me to be my friend." Mac grins, reaching down to untie his boots. He takes off his windbreaker and covers his boots with it, then flops down on Dennis's bedspread beside him.

"We are not friends."

Mac rolls a joint on the top of Dennis's copy of their math textbook while Dennis leans back against his pillow, hugging his knees.

"Your parents aren't gonna care?"

"They don't give a shit what Dee and me do as long as we don't bother them."

"Mine too."

"It's pretty great."

"Yeah." Mac doesn't sound like he agrees, though. He finishes the joint, throwing the textbook off his lap and taking a lighter with a garish skull on both sides from his pocket. He lights it, takes a hit, and then passes it to Dennis.

As soon as Dennis breathes in that first lungful of smoke, he feels every tension he had in his body relax, muscles he didn't even know he had letting go, mind wiped clean. He lowers his knees, rests his legs behind Mac. Mac's smiling at him, asking, _you like it? _and Dennis is saying _yeah dude, it's good_. They smoke the whole joint like that, passing it back and forth on Dennis's bed. Conversation flows. Mac sends Dennis into a giggling fic with a recounting of his and Dirt Grub's (_Charlie'_s) backyard wrestling matches; Dennis shares his psychoanalytic _Star Wars_ theories to Mac's rapt attention; they spend a good twenty minutes making fun of Rickety Cricket and Sweet Dee. When they grow hungry, they tiptoe into Dennis's kitchen, Dennis feeling like an astronaut taking giant, buoyant leaps on the moon, and chew through an entire box of Raisin Bran cereal. Dry, no milk, passing the bag back and forth between them like a 40 ounce. Dipping in, their hands touching the same things. Dennis is too high to care about germs. Dennis trusts Mac, too, is the weird thing, despite the dirt on his hands. That veneer of filth seems like something that just covers Mac no matter what, like the smell and the stupid smile that raises higher on one side, his eyebrows creeping up his forehead, and the feel of the back of his hand as he hands things to Dennis. He takes, too, but he always gives back.

And when the sun starts to set and the high starts to wear off and Mac starts saying that he needs to go Dennis feels the jaws of the predatory cat closing in again, and he wants to pry them open and send the thing out, he wants to take ahold of everything good and never again feel anything bad, but: the sun sets and the high wears off and Mac goes home.

**Twenty-Five**

In the bone-deep cold winter with the bone-white snow, Dennis spends his times buttoned up into two coats and fumbling lighters and joints with gloved hands as he stands in the high school's dirt lot or sits in an overstuffed lounger covered with a scratchy homemade afghan in Charlie's basement. Mac's there, constantly, and Charlie more often than not. Soon they're skipping lunches and classes to get sandwiches and eat them in the warmth of Dennis's car, or they're sharing breath underneath the bleachers, or it's two in the morning in the twilight space between Friday and Saturday and they're watching poorly dubbed martial arts movies. Dennis tries huffing glue a few times, finds he doesn't like it; it makes him feel stupid, while the weed just relaxes him, returns him to a state more like what normal people might experience. Dennis talks Mac out of huffing it so often, too, telling him he needs to stay sharp to make money off his weed. Tells him he should think about getting some shrooms and maybe some E, too, broaden his market.

As far as the pot itself goes, Mac keeps trying to bump the price down to twenty-five but Dennis keeps paying him thirty. Dennis also picks up the habit of buying him and Charlie (but more Mac, always more Mac) random shit; at first it's just the lunches, and then he gives Charlie an old sweater that ripped at some point when he shows up wearing nothing but the gray hoodie on a day below zero, and then he's taking Mac out to go see a movie and paying for his ticket. (It's not gay, because they're not gay; they don't hold hands in the dark, they don't neck in the seats, they don't jack each other off. They share a large soda and a bucket of popcorn, but that's just fiscally sound. Mac rides in Dennis's passenger seat like a smug girl with the hottest boyfriend in school in a 50s PSA about drunk driving, but that's just Mac. Dennis finds himself touching Mac's knee in the car, but that's just a friendly reflex.)

The snow melts and spring starts sending out its new green shoots. Dennis thinks that maybe once this awful winter has passed, he'll stop spending time with Mac and Charlie, but he doesn't. Warmer weather just means that now they play some pick-up basketball together every now and then, spread their bodies over picnic tables and take their lunches on the rusty merry-go-round at the playground.

April, Mac's birthday. Dennis gets him an expensive bottle of tequila and Flyers tickets, for all three of them. Good tickets, too—Dennis worked what little empathy his father possesses, got him to shell out the money after being gone for another long stretch, screaming at his mother that he's tired of this shit, Dennis having to play the good son role and let her stroke his hair and tell him how he's the best thing in her life for weeks afterwards. The Flyers game, though: the team loses, gets their asses handed to them, but Mac, Dennis and Charlie sit in the good seats and eat hot dogs and scream until their voices are hoarse and their ears are broken.

Dennis drops Charlie off first, even though Mac's house is closer to the stadium. It's a Wednesday, a school night, and it's late, and Mac, unfortunately, catches on to the fact that Dennis is not driving towards Mac's house at all.

"Bro," Mac shouts over the music (it's Mac's stupid music, because it's Mac's day.) He shouts it like a question.

Dennis points at the clock. Eleven. "Still your birthday."

"Yeah, and it's been great, but I'm fucking _tired_, and if I don't do that Chem homework I think they might actually kick me out—"

Dennis shuts Mac up by reaching over without even looking at him and putting his hand firmly over Mac's mouth. Mac stills as if Dennis has found his off switch, and Dennis's palms spark, his heart bouncing again.

At Dennis's house Dennis gestures for Mac to keep quiet, though not for fear of getting caught. In Dennis's room, again, and Dennis keeps the lights off and shuts the door softly, then turns to look at Mac, at the white of his eyes and the slight flush in his cheeks, and he leans in and kisses him.

He expects Mac to sputter and jump and punch Dennis in the face, because Dennis has learned two crucial things about Mac these past few months: one, he _hates _gay people and spouts homophobic dogma at the slightest provocation and two, he, himself, is very much gay. Mac is many other things, too, loyal and funny and hot-tempered and a little cunning sometimes, and he makes Dennis's heart twist this way and that every now and again, and Dennis has caught Mac looking at him in the ways that chicks look at him sometimes, so Dennis marries all of these things together in this kiss. He thinks he's doing this for Mac, giving him a good day. He thinks this will make Mac his forever. He thinks Mac will never leave. If Mac has to punch him first, then so be it, but Dennis will keep kissing him until he realizes these things for himself, too.

Except Mac doesn't punch Dennis. He just sort of melts and pauses again, and Dennis thinks that maybe his mouth really is his off switch. He pushes his tongue between Mac's lips and wraps his hands in the long, knotty hair that nearly reaches Mac's shoulders, and he smiles into his mouth when, finally, Mac's lips start moving and his tongue starts darting in these tiny, scared baby-bird ways.

Dennis can work with this, so after a few minutes, after Mac's hands touch Dennis's waist with none of the strength he claims to have, Dennis pulls back. "Happy birthday, dude. I'll do your Chem homework for you tomorrow during lunch."

They sleep in Dennis's bed that night, in their boxers and t-shirts, heads on separate pillows and bodies under separate covers. Dennis doesn't kiss Mac again. He can wait for it.

He does Mac's homework as he promises.

He kisses Mac intermittently, and at first he tries to hide it from Charlie and then he gives up. Charlie couldn't give less of a shit, and he's loyal, too, close-lipped to people that are not Mac or Dennis. But Dennis never kisses Mac at school, never in the dirt lot and never under the bleachers, never behind the dumpsters and never at the playground—always in the cocoon of Dennis's room or Charlie's basement or sometimes, more rarely, in Mac's room, pressing him against his boyhood closet and letting all the Jesuses on the wall watch.

The next time Dennis tries to buy weed off of Mac, Mac insists that he'll give it to Dennis for free. "I'm just gonna smoke it, too," he says. They're at a diner, it's a Sunday afternoon, and after this they're going to hang out in the mall and maybe harass some middle schoolers. Dennis wants to get high before then—he'd been up late last night, hunger eating away at his stomach, and he's forcing himself through the over-buttered BLT in front of him. He finally gives up and pulls the bacon strips off, slides them onto Mac's plate instead.

"Let me pay," Dennis insists. "Nothing needs to change."

"I feel like I'm taking advantage of you."

Dennis smiles.

Mac acquiesces finally, and Dennis pays for their meal, too. They smoke up behind the mall. Mac buys a new pair of jeans and some shirts, and Dennis kisses him in the shadowy part of Spencer's by the sex toys. Dennis thinks, this is alright, this is okay, and this is the way things will be, now and forever.


End file.
